EVs also help with the brake disc “dust” since a lot of the braking is “regenerative breaking” done by the electric motor and does not use the brake pads at all. They require less maintenance, and have fewer parts in them, so fewer manufacturing materials. With very few exceptions, they are also smaller vehicles with more safety features which should result in fewer pedestrian casualties.
Obviously having no vehicles at all would be even better at solving these issues, but that’s not practical for our current reality. Maybe in 100 years.
I will say that “autopilot” features should absolutely be outlawed and cause nothing but trouble to everyone.
Which market is it that is producing smaller EVs? They’re all just regular cars turned EV, which means they’re heavier and you can’t feature-rich your way out of physics as per pedestrian safety
China has some great small, low and medium range electric cars. They’re not allowed to be sold in the U.S. due to protectionism, but they exist, and they’re cheap as hell compared to most EVs.
Emissions Analytics has found that adding 1,000 pounds to a midsize vehicle increased tire wear by about 20 percent, and also that Tesla’s Model Y generated 26 percent more tire pollution than a similar Kia hybrid. EVs’ more aggressive torque, which translates into faster acceleration, is another factor that creates more tire particulate mile for mile compared to similar internal combustion engine cars.
100 years is ambitious only if you want to remove all of the cars. There are plenty of milestones that can be attained fairly quickly :
Smaller cars. Less energy, materials, etc. Safer for other road users (you don’t get hit on your vital organs, better vision for the driver and everyone else since pedestrians can easily see over the car).
Less car use is available now, if we just empower the alternatives (make bike usage safe, make public transport good enough)
No more cars in cities. Bikes + trains mostly do the job, you can rent a car if you leave the city, or park it at the outskirts.
Even smaller cities used to be liveable without a car. This could be brought back, but that’s probably a tough hill to climb.
I will say that “autopilot” features should absolutely be outlawed and cause nothing but trouble to everyone
Autopilot is a pretty broad category. I like the autopilot on my car, which is nothing like elon musks self driving bullshit. It only turns on on supported highways and uses lidar instead of machine vision. All it does is maintain a following distance and follow the curve of the road. On Long drives it stops your foot and arms being fatigued and frees up a lot more mental space to look out for road hazards, it has a camera in the wheel that makes sure you have your eyes pointed at the road. I don’t see any risks for this sort of simple autopilot but it does have a lot of upside.
I’d definitely rather ride the train if it didn’t cost 200 dollars and come once a day, but until it gets better(and I’ve been writing a lot of letters to my officials) my self driving ev is the best alternative.
I’m tired of people looking at me crazy because I keep suggesting we need better public transportation rather than fucking electric cars. We are 100% going to replace every car in America with an E.V before we ever expand access to public transportation. And we will do this because the car manufacturers stock prices will go up if we do.
Funny thing about horses - apparently when cities moved over to cars from horses they became safer. Because horses spook: and one spooked horse can spook the rest and you get a stampede.
Personally I’d rather be riding my horse from village to village over the hills - and I’m lucky enough to have had need to do that in real life. And I would prefer a city of bicycles to a city of cars. But my point (albeit meant casually) is that most of our solutions have downsides too, even the better-looking ones.
Funny thing about horses - apparently when cities moved over to cars from horses they became safer. Because horses spook: and one spooked horse can spook the rest and you get a stampede.
You seem cool enough / not carbrained that I’d like to suggest you to take a closer look at this. The perception of “horse -> car” as per transportation is pretty prevalent but it doesn’t really hold up in the sense this fun fact is often touted, it’s born out of a car based status quo applied backwards to horses mostly.
I’m happy to merit your insufficient-car-brains certification :-)
What quite do you mean? That horses weren’t used in the same way or for the same demographic as cars are now? Sure, and you also don’t refill them every 200 miles from the nearest highway hay-station. (Well, kind of…) But there were still horses clustered in many cities for a lot of the time, right? Where now there are cars? And as transport such as did use the one mainly transitioned to the other. I don’t suppose there’s hard, quantitative data on car-induced vs horse-induced deaths/injuries within cities at certain eras, but maybe someone has that data somewhere!
Actually, to go another step from your point: I suppose if cars, in their same number and usage, were traded for horses, then besides the epic problem of feeding them all, many cities would be far more dangerous now from the great horde of horses marching through every day!
I suppose if cars, in their same number and usage, were traded for horses, then besides the epic problem of feeding them all, many cities would be far more dangerous now from the great horde of horses marching through every day!
I’ll start off here: eh, maybe. Certainly a lot more full of massive amounts of poop everywhere, that was a common problem even with not every man, woman and child a horse, it’s where we got sidewalks from - so you could walk in not-poop.
Sure, and you also don’t refill them every 200 miles from the nearest highway hay-station. (Well, kind of…) But there were still horses clustered in many cities for a lot of the time, right? Where now there are cars?
Yes, but nowhere near the same extent. Check out old city street pictures from the 1910 and 1920s. Sure, you’ll see cars, they had been invented and hell, you still see horses, except pretty much all of them barring the ones with cops on it are pulling some thing or another. And also there’s trams and also there’s just a buttload of people walking - which is what most of them did.
The point I’m getting at is the notion that we basically just replaced horses with cars, for the most part, but that’s ahistorical. We’ve replaced horses and trams and walking and cycling - all of which were done a lot - with cars. People used and could use a variety of options, now, eh, not so much, they’re not really viable for a lot of people.
But then that’s not because cars are so inherently great for any and all transporation, it’s just we’ve built cities to accomodate cars first, foremost and nigh exclusively, to the detriment of everything else. You wouldn’t find me arguing to bring back the horses, but trams, cycling, walking? Absolutely.
Because we have pretty much gained nothing from cars. People still have roughly the same commute as before - they just live further away and travel the same time, except now the societal cost of doing that is 10x the price per trip. People have a time budget for travel, not a distance budget, and that’s stayed pretty much the same.
the notion that we basically just replaced horses with cars … We’ve replaced horses and trams and walking and cycling - all of which were done a lot - with cars.
Fair point
we have pretty much gained nothing from cars.
I don’t think that’s true, though. Cars bring a lot of utility; even the opportunity to live further from the workplace is not ‘no benefit’. After all, bicycles were hailed as the liberators of women, for much the same reason: ordinary women could have the freedom to travel further. I think what’s happened is that every gain is an opportunity for benefit; but also an opportunity for the greedy and powerful (not to mention lazy, deceitful, foolish, or any combination of the above) to take advantage of other people (and themselves) through. So (for example) cars bring the opportunity to work further from your house; and now many people are forced into living further from their work because employers/infrastructure expect it to be possible. Cars make it much easier to visit far-away relatives for festivals; now Americans must line up every year on Reddit to moan about Thanksgiving politics.
I will agree with you it’d be better if we restructured most transport away from cars and that we have - in principle - the options for a good solution (trams, bicycles, better-arranged-cities, etc). Still, what would the American dream be, without driving to your gym every week so you can run on the treadmill for half an hour ;-p
I’m certain dense human populations are better for the environment than non-dense human populations, because dense human populations need to be moved around less.
You’re basically advocating for human extinction in this comment.
also, if the West did adopt EVs en mass (hard to even imagine), all those ICE vehicles aren’t just disappearing. They’re getting exported to the rest of the world as cheap used cars. Nothing has been “replaced”, you’ve just made more cars and more pollution.
@TheLastHero@Masimatutu Nah, there's not much intercontinental transport of used cars. Too expensive and complicated. If the West adopted EVs en mass there would be a lot less gasoline consumption there, and little increase elsewhere.
I disagree. The UN predicts the number of light duty vehicles to more than double by 2050, with 90% of that growth happening in non-OECD countries. Granted that would be a mix of new and used cars, but the vehicle trade is only regulated on the national level. That means there are considerable financial incentives to export abroad and take advantage of regulatory inconsistency.
For example, stricter emissions laws means that many cars may not be able to be driven at all in a country, but those laws do not exist elsewhere- that will cause an oversupply of cars that can’t be legally sold domestically, but demand for cars is only grow in the global south as their economies and standards of living improve. Logistic and shipping costs also get cheaper every year and shouldn’t be relied on as a economic deterrent, and it’s apparently already cheap enough for the US, Japan, and EU to export 14 million used vehicles between 2015-2018. Rich counties and their populations tend to replace their cars far before their economic life is over as well, and vehicle values depreciate far quicker in the OECD compared to elsewhere. There’s goi lot of economic pressure to
yeah and tyre abbrasion correlates with weight, which given the current trend of “Same car but now EV = lots heavier” that one’s just gonna get worse, same for brakes. Pretty much just trading exhaust particles for more particulate dust from tyres and brakes
@showmustgo@Masimatutu I wonder if the tires edison invented that were made from golden rod would have been any better. it was more profitable to make tires how we've been doing it for 80 years.
Yes, pollution is a big problem. Not sure why so many people ignore it.
I keep it simple and use the communal traffic(bus/train) instead. I have never bought a car and don’t miss it as i live near the things I need grocery store and workplace(bike 5km).
I bet there are statistics on just how much space is wasted on cars (roads, parking space) but I don’t have them handy. It will probaly pretty maddening when only considering “urban” areas but I wonder if it’s more or less of 1% of the world’s total landmass …
I want public transport more than anything, but where I live there’s little to none, I can’t do anything about that other than voting for parties that apparently have little chance to win. What I can do is buy an electric car, sue me.
I feel the most consequent stance is to demand all the things. Not to reject all the things except for the one pure solution.
As long as ICE vehicles are still sold, even make up the most of the sales, supporting EVs is moving in the right direction. At the same time, even better solutions can be demanded and supported.
The point is that electric cars are shit, have never been a solution to anything, and that they shouldn’t be presented as one, doubly so when as a technology, public transport exists.
We will get public transportation from one million people city to the next in billionaire tubes. And exploited drive-app drivers will drive people around inside them, because public transportation isn’t flashy or profitable enough without the vacuum and the time savings.
They conveniently left off the 3 month oil changes, grease fittings, transmission fluid, gear oil, brake fluid, power steering fluid, etc. Cars have a lot of fluids and after market additives that people use to try and pass the inspection tests. Also the corruption where people pay off the inspectors to make sure the vehicle passes
I’m sure that there’s a decent chunk of corruption with inspections, but there are also states like Arkansas where we don’t ever have to get our vehicles inspected… It’s absurd how shitty some of the cars and trucks are that I see regularly.
Well obviously less vehicles of any kind would be a benefit. Cities designed around people with public transport options would always beat out a society where everyone has a car. I think there is more push on this in Europe than the US, where outside of the big cities public transport is virtually non-existent. Urban planning should emphasis central districts to create transport hubs where people eat / work / shop and therefore demand to make public transport. And outside of that cycle routes, footpaths etc.
But electric vehicles are still much better than ICE vehicles. Over their life time they account for 1/4 emissions (depending on how power is generated) and those emissions can be more effectively captured. And of course renewables bring the emissions down year on year. There is a direct correlation between NOx emissions and respiratory deaths so this is a good thing. Also less CO2 emissions and contribution to global warming. Also, particulates are much less - brakes are not the primary source of deceleration in an EV (regen is) so pads don’t see anything like as much use as an ICE car. Some EVs are even going back to using drum brakes where the dust is basically captured inside an enclosed drum. The tyres also aren’t any worse or faster wearing than ICE vehicles so in that regard it’s even.
Agree with almost everything you said here, EVs are definitely significantly cleaner than ice vehicles but you’re oversimplifying a little when it comes to brakes and tires. Some cheap evs are going to drum brakes but the vast majority of modern evs are using significantly larger brakes with softer pads than equivalent gas vehicles due to the acceleration offered by electric vehicles. Its possible that as time goes on and electric vehicles make up a bigger market share of economy cars this will change.
The bigger issue with clean EVs is the insane amount of rubber they use in their tires. I’m not sure where you’ve heard the tires on EVs are roughly equivalent to ICE, sue to the weight increase EVs use much bigger tires that wear down faster than gasoline vehicles and I’ve read a few studies about the possibility of these tires throwing more “marbles” or small pieces of rubber than their lighter ICE counterparts. All this not to mention the increased road maintenance required by doubling the weight of the average car in the last thirty has me concerned were trading toxic fumes for other forms of pollution.
I wouldn’t say Volkswagen ID cars (ID.3, ID.4, ID.Buzz), Audi Q4 e-tron are cheap cars but they’re using drum brakes. Drum brakes are actually more efficient since a pad isn’t rubbing against the plate, impeding efficiency. It’s also easier to integrate electronic parking brakes into the mechanism. I imagine other EV makers will follow suit if for no other reason than it saves money and weight.
As for tyre wear, I’ve already pointed to links from the RAC & Kwikfit who I trust know what they’re talking about. I suppose if you drove an EV like you just stole it you might suffer wear but I imagine most people don’t drive like that and actually drive their car anticipating the need for acceleration / deceleration to maximize regen. And that style of driving also happens to reduce wear on the tyres.
It also destroys the very infrastructure that it’s trying to clear snow from. We eventually need to recognize that rubber wheels on asphalt simply isn’t a very efficient or durable method of moving large amounts of stuff long distances. Steel on steel is superior in both efficiency and longevity.
The reverse is also a thing, btw. Though it still uses special rail. But some Russian evil geniuses have made a road drive-able train before, and nobody even knows what for.
Which is why the real solution is PUBLIC transit, not private motor vehicle ownership of any kind beyond small electric personal mobility like an e-bike or scooter.
We eventually need to recognize that rubber wheels on asphalt simply isn’t a very efficient or durable method of moving large amounts of stuff long distances.
I disagree here, there’s in here for cars that’s hard to do otherwise. I think the problem is more that that is also not at all what cars are primarily used for. Like even in the US 60% of trips are under 6 miles and average occupancy rate is 1,5 persons. That’s a bike ride.
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